Pressure sores and the accumulation of fluid in the lungs have always been endemic among immobile patients. These problems develop when an immobile patient remains in the same position for prolonged periods of time. Aside from causing considerable pain to the patient, pressure sores are difficult and costly to treat. They can become infected and may even lead to the death of the patient.
There is consensus among wound care specialists that in most cases pressure sores are preventable if the immobile patient is repositioned or turned at least once every two hours. This is also the recommendation of both the (U.S.) National Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel and the European Pressure Ulcer Advisory Board.
The manual turning of an immobile patient every two hours by a nurse or a caregiver is physically demanding and labor intensive. Recent studies have reported that at the current level of funding and staffing, many immobile patients in American long-term care nursing facilities often are left to remain in the same position for up to four hours. An ideal solution that would provide quality patient care at current staffing levels is to develop an automatic mechanical device for repositioning a patient that would be as effective in pressure sore prevention as the manual turning every two hours by a nurse or a caregiver.
In response to the need to find an automatic rotational device that would periodically reposition an immobile patient, eight patented inventions since 1970 have been selected and cited here. Each one can alternately tilt a patient on an incline from side to side by utilizing right and left elongated inflatables to laterally raise alternate longitudinal sides of the surface upon which the patient lies.
In FIG. 1-A through FIG. 1-H, a prior drawing from each of these eight patented inventions shows the angle of incline and method used in tilting a patient. The slope of the angles ranges from approximately 15 to 32 degrees. The following drawings of the eight prior inventions are listed in chronological order.
FIG. 1-A3,717,885,Feb. 27, 1973,De Mare, “ClinicalManipulator.”FIG. 1-B3,775,781,Dec. 4, 1973,Bruno et al., “Patient TurningApparatus.”FIG. 1-C3,895,403,Jul. 22, 1975,Davis, “Patient OrientingDevice.”FIG. 1-D4,934,002,Jun. 19, 1990,Watanabe, “Tiltable MatAssembly.”FIG. 1-E5,092,007,Mar. 3, 1992,Hasty, “Air Mattress Overlayfor Lateral Patient Roll.”FIG. 1-F5,121,512,Jun. 16, 1992,Kaufmann, “AuxiliaryInflatable Device ServingMattress.”FIG. 1-G6,154,900,Dec. 5, 2000,Shaw, “Patient TurningApparatus.”FIG. 1-H6,253,402,Jul. 3, 2001,Lin, “Air Bed StructureCapable of Lying Thereon onEither of One's Sides.”
Currently, there are on the market a number of rotational air mattresses that can alternately tilt a patient to lie on an approximate 30-degree incline. In terms of repositioning, the alternate tilting of a patient is certainly more effective in reducing the incidence of pressure sores than having a patient lie continuously upon the flat, horizontal surface of a stationary, non-tilting mattress. In all of those eight rotational devices, and in all such devices on the market today, the patients alternately lie on an incline until tilted to the other side with their legs flat and in a straight position.
Even when a patient has been alternately tilted automatically, some wound care specialists recommend that the patient should still be turned manually. An optimum automatic repositioning device is one that would have immobile patients alternately turned from one complete side to the other in a manner similar to the manual turning by a nurse or caregiver where the patient, until turned to the opposite side, would lie on a flat mattress with a pillow between their bent knees and legs, and a pillow supporting the back. The present invention uses an innovative technology making it the only device that can automatically perform such periodic repositioning that would preclude the necessity of having the patient turned manually.
The turning process of the Automatic Patient Turner is slow and gentle, and it takes approximately three minutes. When a patient lies on his or her side, there is no pressure on the back, buttocks, or heels, three areas of the body where pressure sores are more likely to develop. There are two options relative to the turning cycle. One is to have the patient lie on one side for no more than one hour and then be turned to the other side. The other option is having the patient lie for no more than an hour on one side, no more than an hour on his or her back, and no more than an hour on the other side.
An automatic turn performed by the Automatic Patient Turner is, in some ways, even superior to manual turning because it is gentler, less intrusive, and less abrasive. The manual turning of a patient is intrusive, whereas the turning process of the Automatic Patient Turner is so slow and gentle that it will not wake the average sleeping patient. The patient will then have a full night of uninterrupted sleep, an important factor in the well being of the patient. Secondly, automatic turning is significantly less abrasive than manual turning because no sliding of the patient across the surface of the mattress is involved.
Since the present invention can gently turn a patient from one complete side to the other every hour in a manner similar to, and is some ways even better than, the manual turning by a nurse or caregiver, it would not be an overstatement to say that for immobile, bedridden patients, the Automatic Patient Turner shows great promise of being the ultimate in pressure sore prevention.